Contributors

Olivia Swarthout is the creator and curator of the internet sensation Weird Medieval Guys. A lifelong aficionado for all things strange and obscure, Olivia's work centres around unearthing the most unexpected and entertaining stories from the annals of human history. Her first book, Weird Medieval Guys, was a love letter to the creativity, hilarity, and timeless appeal of art from the Middle Ages. Swarthout is a surname of Middle Dutch origin that roughly translates to 'Black Forest'. It probably originated near a Frisian forest of the same name, but neither the woods nor their inhabitants are around to say for sure. Olivia grew up between Montana and Berlin before settling in London.

Glen E. Swanson is a historian of space exploration and former Chief Historian of
NASA's Johnson Space Center, where he led the digitization of the Apollo mission transcripts
and served as a consultant to astronauts, authors, and filmmakers.

A Fellow of The Explorers Club, Swanson is the author of Inspired Enterprise: How NASA, the Smithsonian, and the Aerospace Community Helped Launch Star Trek (Schiffer, 2025) as well as numerous essays on NASA history and the culture of spaceflight.

His research sheds light on how the Golden Record emerged from NASA's post-Apollo environment, an era of budgetary restriction and necessary innovation, and how the Voyagers' journey reshaped humanity's sense of itself.

John Sutherland is Professor of Modern English Literature at University College London and a visiting professor at the California Institute of Technology. He has published twenty books (including Is Heathcliff a Murderer? Great Puzzles in 19th Century Fiction) and writes a weekly column for the Guardian. He was chairman of the 2005 Man Booker Prize for Fiction.

Daisetsu Teitaro Suzuki was a Japanese author of books and essays on Buddhism, Zen and Shin that were instrumental in spreading interest in both Zen and Shin to the West.

Bokyeong Sunim was ordained at Songgwangsa, one of South Korea's most prestigious and ancient temples. He has spent over a decade at Beopryeonsa Temple in Seoul. He is also the author of Time Spent Reading a Cat and The Happiness Cats Bring.

Kate Summerscale is the author of the number one bestselling The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction 2008, winner of the Galaxy British Book of the Year Award, a Richard & Judy Book Club pick and adapted into a major ITV drama. Her debut, The Queen of Whale Cay, won a Somerset Maugham award and was shortlisted for The Whitbread Biography Award. The Wicked Boy, published in 2016, won the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime. Her latest book, The Haunting of Alma Fielding, was shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction. She lives in north London.

Dr Lixing Sun is a Harvard Radcliffe fellow and distinguished research professor at Central Washington University. He first studied at East China Normal University in Shanghai before completing a PhD in ecology, behaviour and evolution at the State University of New York and Syracuse University.

He has authored or co-authored over 60 research articles in scientific journals, and contributed extensively to a number of academic books, as well as authoring four academic books. The most recent, The Liars of Nature and the Nature, of which was selected as a Book of the Week by the Wall Street Journal and the New Yorker. He was awarded a Harvard Radcliffe Fellowship in 2024.

Julie Summers is the author of Jambusters: the story of the Women's Institute in the Second World War, which inspired ITV's 2015 hugely successful drama Home Fires, now into a second series. She also wrote When the Children Came Home and Stranger in the House, among others. Fashion on the Ration appeared in March 2015. She lives in Oxford.

Jonathan Sumption is a British judge and historian, who served as a Supreme Court Justice from 2012 – 2018. He is the author of the Sunday Times bestseller Trials of the State, Law in a Time of Crisis, and Divided Houses, which won the 2009 Wolfson History Prize.

Susan Stryker is an award-winning historian and filmmaker whose work has shaped conversation on gender and feminism for decades. She holds a visiting Professorship at Stanford University. Previous works include Transgender History, Gay by the Bay and the Emmy Award-winning documentary Screaming Queens.

Noah Keefer Strycker (born February 9, 1986) is an American birdwatcher. In 2015, he set a record for a worldwide Big Year of Birding, seeing 6,042 of the world's estimated 10,400 bird species in a continuous journey spanning all seven continents from January 1 to December 31, 2015.

Joe Studwell is a researcher and consultant. He is the Senior Visiting Fellow at the Overseas Development Institute in London, and holds a PhD in global business and development from the University of Cambridge. Previous titles include How Asia Works and The China Dream.